Q. What's become of Raquel Welch? We haven't heard much...

MAGPIE

February 20, 1989

Q. What's become of Raquel Welch? We haven't heard much about her lately.

A. Welch is within sight of age 50 - she will be 47 this year - and hasn't had a big movie part in a while. So her career's in trouble, right? Wrong. Welch recently won a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a big Hollywood studio that had fired her from the cast of the 1982 movie, Cannery Row. She's also carved quite a niche in the video world with her popular exercise and fitness cassettes. She's also returning to TV in something called Trouble in Paradise for CBS.

Q. Hildegarde, the famous old-time chanteuse, claimed in an interview that she was the first to use a single name. ''My full name was Hildegarde Loretta Sell,'' she said, ''and then Cher and Madonna and everyone else followed suit.'' Is that correct?

A. Hardly. The vogue of using a solitary tag reached its peak long before the singer, who just turned 83, was well-known. Many others had already scratched part of their names. Among the best known were Margo, Nazimova, and Zorina, with Sabu representing the male contingent. Even Greta Garbo got into the act, intermittently being known as simply Garbo.